The dock worker's strike started on 4 March, with severe effects.

The Finnish dock workers’ strike risks damaging the Finnish forest and paper industries, the financial paper Kauppalehti reports.

“THE GREATEST sufferer of the dockers’ strike is the forest industry, which claims to be losing 30 million euros a day due to the strike. There is also a danger that work will be permanently lost to competitors abroad.

Timo Jaatinen, the Director General of the Finnish Forest Industries Federation, says that because of the strike and the Transport Workers’ Union’s (AKT) ban on overtime that preceded it the forestry companies have lost orders to competitors. In addition to this the forestry companies have moved production from Finland to their own production facilities abroad.

Each day about 20,000 to 25,000 rolls of paper are made in Finland. Each roll weighs about 1.5 tonnes, with a diameter of about one metre. Companies don’t have the storage space for such quantities.

The first victim of the strike was the paper factory in Rauma, which was closed on Thursday. All of UPM’s paper machines threaten to stop within a few days while deliveries will be handled from the company’s other factories abroad. ‘Once you lose market share, getting it back is difficult. This strike will affect Finland’s reputation,’ Hans Sohlström, the head of UPM, reminds people.”

KAUPPALEHTI 5 March. ANU LEENA KOSKINEN
LEHTIKUVA - Vesa Moilanen